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The sound of Sharon Van Etten’s music has evolved greatly since her debut album, “Because I Was In Love,” came out in 2009. The sparse, overly laid-back style of that CD gave way a year later to the punchier folk-rock of her breakthrough album “epic” and this year to the complex indie-rock vibe of “Tramp.”

Her career has grown along with that maturing style. The 31-year-old New Jersey native is an in-demand internationally touring performer, and it’s a safe bet that “Tramp” will show up on a fair amount of “best album of the year” lists in the coming weeks.

Van Etten’s sound is certainly different than it was a few years back when she was a timid performer playing open-mike night at Radio Bean in Burlington.

“I was pretty country then,” Van Etten said in a recent phone conversation from her home in Brooklyn. She said she was staying with her younger sister, Laura, seven or eight years ago while Laura was attending the University of Vermont. Sharon was between stints living in Tennessee and New Jersey, and said her sister pushed her to get out and play in Burlington.

Van Etten said she went to Radio Bean’s open-mike night once a week for a month, where she played country-inspired songs that haven’t found their way onto any of her three albums. “It was what I needed at the time,” she said. “There is no ego there. It’s just people playing their hearts out.”

Van Etten returns to the state that gave her career an early boost when she plays Saturday at Higher Ground. Though her family is from New Jersey, the Van Ettens have left their mark all over Burlington. Not only did Laura Van Etten, 29, attend UVM, older brother Steve, 35, went to Champlain College and only recently moved back to New Jersey from Burlington.

The youngest of the five siblings, Peter, 27, also attended UVM and still lives in Burlington, which means Sharon will have a place to crash when she’s in town Saturday (“He’s a walking male version of me,” Sharon Van Etten said of her younger brother).

Peter Van Etten, who majored in art and minored in music, tends bar at American Flatbread and is active in the Burlington music-and-art scene (he designed the artwork for the new CD by the Burlington band Vedora). He’s enjoying watching his sister’s career grow from a woman on acoustic guitar singing simple songs to seeing her play a variety of instruments and working with well-known musicians such as Aaron Dessner of The National, who helped her record “Tramp.”

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“It’s really exciting to see her go from a solo performer to more of a full-band sound,” Peter Van Etten said in a recent conversation before starting his shift at American Flatbread. He said he’s also enjoying watching her touring schedule grow and grow. “It’s fun because I have to look on her website to see where she’s going to be.”

Sharon Van Etten said she didn’t set out to beef up the sound behind her revealing songs of relationships gone wrong. “It’s a natural progression,” she said. “It definitely wasn’t something I forced myself to do. You don’t really get good work done that way. I just kind of got bored with the acoustic guitar.”

Her sound began changing, she said, when a friend gave her an electric guitar and her approach to songwriting took a new turn. “I started writing more songs when I was angry than when I was sad,” Van Etten said. “I realized there was a more aggressive sound to the songs.”

Her brother sees a change, too, but not a drastic one. “I think it was pretty subtle,” Peter Van Etten said. “She’s still keeping true to her melodies.”

Paddy Reagan books shows at The Monkey House, which has hosted Van Etten three times at the various stages of her career. The first time she played the Winooski venue was as a solo performer and her music was “very subdued and mellow,” according to Reagan.

“And when I saw her with the band, the three piece at the Monkey, from that second record, ‘epic,’ it had a lot of those tunes on it so it was a little more rocking,” he said. “This most recent time I saw her it had more of those rockers for sure.”

Like Peter Van Etten, Reagan has watched Sharon Van Etten’s evolution first-hand. “It’s basically followed the trajectory of the records,” Reagan said. “It has more of that big, open sound to it with lots of reverb, although vocally she has that ethereal beauty to her vocals, anyway.”

“He’s seen me progress, for sure,” Van Etten said of Reagan.

The Van Ettens have a musical current that runs through the entire family. Both brothers play the drums. Van Etten said her father took the children to their first rock concerts and her mother, a fan of visual art, brought them to galleries. Her mother gave Sharon her first guitar song books — that’s where her early Bob Dylan and John Denver influences came from — and her uncle bestowed her with a hand-me-down acoustic guitar.

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She’s gone from those simple musical beginnings to a performer who’s touring the world with her band. She expressed amazement that she’s been able to meet musical heroes such as John Cale of The Velvet Underground and Jools Holland, the former keyboard player for Squeeze who had her on his long-running British TV music show “Later … with Jools Holland.” Van Etten said her career sometimes gets surreal, like when a promoter in Turkey recently paid for her and her band to come to Istanbul and play a show for 500 people who were singing her lyrics.

“It was a really intense feeling — ‘How do they know who I am? And they’re singing along,’” Van Etten said. “It made me want to cry.”

She’s looking forward to her return to Burlington, where she said she’ll visit her brother and spend time strolling around the city, which she called “a great walking town.” She said she likes to shop at Pure Pop Records and dine on the biscuits and gravy at Penny Cluse Cafe.

Van Etten will tour the U.S., Europe and Australia before heading back home in January. Between touring and living in various places Van Etten has been something of an itinerant musician, but she’s looking forward to a little time off from her suddenly in-demand music career.

“Even when I want to be still it’s hard for me because of my chosen lifestyle,” she said. “I yearn for domesticity. When I come home all I want to do is sit and watch movies and make my boyfriend cook for me.”